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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29548047">anything to anywhere</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnintentionallySketchy/pseuds/UnintentionallySketchy'>UnintentionallySketchy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Eventual Smut, F/F, Nurse!Dani, Pilot!Jamie, Pining, Romance, Slow Burn, World War II</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 20:06:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,581</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29548047</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnintentionallySketchy/pseuds/UnintentionallySketchy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Under the cloak of darkness, she waits. </p><p>She waits for death. She waits for life. She waits for everything to stop and to begin and she breathes to remind herself that it will. It will. She’ll wait for anything to go anywhere.</p><p>or;</p><p>A World War II angst fic that absolutely nobody but myself asked for.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dani Clayton/Jamie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>79</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>107</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. the enlistment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Way back when this fandom was born, somebody made a joke about thinking that when Jamie said she served time, she meant in the military not prison. This hairbrain fever has creeped into my dreams every day since. I did as much research as I could for this. I am trying to make it as historically accurate as possible but alas I was born in 1989 and I wasn’t there and I was a film major with just a measly double minor in American History and literature so you’ll have to excuse the factual errors that may arise. If any of you do have insight into any of this world though, I would love to hear about it!</p><p>That all being said, it’s 1943 and it’s a war and it’s going to be chock full of angst. Like the most angst I’ve ever written and if you’ve ever read any of my stories you’ll know that’s a lot of fucking angst. Like I'm talking Pearl Harbor meets the Notebook levels of angst. But apparently I need that to thrive.</p><p>I will be working on this congruently with my other story (little white dove) and alternating updates but this idea has just been a passion project for me for a while so I wanted to share it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Under the cloak of darkness, she waits. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She waits for death. She waits for life. She waits for everything to stop and to begin and she breathes to remind herself that it will. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It will. </span>
  </em>
  <span>She’ll wait for anything to go anywhere.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>______</span>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>7 December, 1941 - NEW YORK, New York</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>Danielle O’Mara was many things to herself, few things to even fewer people, and absolutely everything for one man. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the Dani Clayton she truly was, absolutely abhorred this fact. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had her routine, her daily monotonous schedule, meticulously planned and perfected down to every second. She’d wake at 6 to prepare herself for Eddie, primped and primed and hair swept up behind her ears and by 7 she’d prepare Eddie for the day. At 8, she’d plate his food and fix his tie and let him kiss her exactly once before he gathered up his briefcase and started on the 22 block walk from their dingy 7th floor apartment to his job on Wall Street.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Around 9, Dani would tie her white cloth apron around her thin waist and lay her head into the palms of her hand and remind herself that with each day that passes in complacent continuity she gets closer to being brave. Closer to stepping out into this great big world and taking what she wants. Closer to breaking away. The city was growing, women were working, and she was closer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By 10, Dani had all the dishes done, all the pots and pans and plates scrubbed clean, dried, and placed back in their designed location. By noon, Dani had the entire one bedroom space vacuumed and dusted and placed back into perfection. And by 2, she had been able to convince herself that maybe life here wasn’t the worst thing. Maybe she could be happy one day. Maybe everything from before was dead and gone and buried where it belonged. Because when she stopped from her routine to let herself think, really </span>
  <em>
    <span>think</span>
  </em>
  <span>, about how she ended up here alongside a tall man with thick rimmed glasses and curly hair that always seemed to pop out of it’s slicked back style, well; Dani couldn’t stop and think.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So instead, she’d turn the radio on at 2:30 to remind herself that there was life elsewhere. There was a war being fought across the sea. There were young men dying, children being captured, bombs and planes and blood was spilling in the streets and Dani couldn’t let herself get stuck on the mindlessness of her own internal battles. The same battles she fought on the same schedule every day. Just like clockwork.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But today the sameness was no longer the same. Today, there was a chink in the armor of this strong country. After today, nothing would ever be the same again.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We interrupt this broadcast to bring you an important bulletin from the United Press. Flash: Washington.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
  <span>The grainy voice interrupts a third down play by the Giants. Dani almost misses it entirely as she refolds Eddie’s dress shirt for the third time, making sure it’s just the way he likes it.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The White House announces the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>It hits Dani like the cold wind that’s slapping in from the window, knocks her off balance. She hears the distant muffled cheers from the football game once again. As if the words she just heard haven’t penetrated the protected veneer of the outside world yet. As if they don’t know, nobody knows, that nothing will ever be the same again. She rushes to the radio, turning the volume up, folding her knees up into her chest as she sits herself down on the floor and tunes the radio to another channel.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>This is CBS In America calling Honolulu. Go ahead, Honolulu.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She holds her breath to silence. Static cracks, there is no voice that answers. There is no return, no calming rhetoric to quantify the severity of just a few short sentences. There is only silence.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We regret to inform you that we are unable to contact Manila or Honolulu. We return you now to New York.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Silence. Dani cries. And the philharmonic continues to play on, melodic and slow. Dani’s heart races and her hands reach again to change the dial. She needs more, more information, more answers. Just, more.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor by air, President Roosevelt has just announced. An attack was also made on all naval and military activities on the island of Oahu. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani waits. She waits for the updates, trickling in slowly. She waits for Eddie to return home. It’s nearly 6 now and he should be walking through the door any moment. Dani’s wasted hours lost in the forest of her own mind, hacking through her instincts, tampering them back and telling herself that she’s where she belongs. He’ll be upset that there’s no dinner on the table. He’ll be upset that Dani’s makeup has run and her eyes are puffy and her hands are shaking. He’ll be upset that her dress is wrinkled from the spot she’s battoned herself to on the hardwood floor. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>In view of Prime Minister Churchill’s recent pledge that a British declaration of war on Japan would follow almost immediately upon the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States, a British announcement is expected soon.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie’s not upset. At least, Eddie’s not upset in the way that Dani would hope he would be. Eddie is, instead, indifferent. He’s angry, surely, with how this war may personally affect him. He’s fearful for what it might mean for his work, for his future, for his money. He’s frustrated that Dani won’t stop biting at her nails and losing her train of thought as she tries to pretend that this is just another normal night. Another normal night with another normal roast and carrots that she carefully drops down in front of him with a shaky hand and a sweaty brow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie doesn’t care, not like Dani does and that’s always been the biggest gap between them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And now, on the verge of war and chaos and change, Dani knows there’s about to be a lot more than just a gap between their hearts that they must bridge. There’s about to be an entire ocean.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>_____</span>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>3 February, 1942 - HAMBLE, Southampton</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>She holds the tattered paper in her hand. A work order, a permission slip, a simple piece of paper with her name on it. An address, an officer, an assignment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was both her ticket in and her ticket out. Jamie wasn’t sure which of the two she was trying to keep a vice grip on but the paper crinkles and she’s quick to smooth it back out against her crisply ironed pant leg.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her black laced boots are muddy from the trek in from town. She’d gotten her notification of acceptance into the program only a week ago and it took every minute of it for her to find her way from Liverpool down to Southampton. Travel had been tricky, as everything seemed to be between county lines for the past few years. Ever since-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a rumble, low and loud beside her as an envoy carrier comes to a halt at the barb wire gates. There’s some yelling through an open window, a man with a clipboard ordering the clothed cover over the back of the truck to be lifted as another points his artillery in their direction. There’s an eye roll from the driver and the passenger, a young man only in his early 20s, gets out and scampers to the back. There’s a nod and wave and the truck is through and Jamie is once again alone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It started with an ad. Women wanted for the Air Transport Auxiliary. Jamie didn’t know much about planes, didn’t know much about flying or engines and hardly anything about what it was to put them both together but she knew honor and she knew country and she knew that she’d do anything she could to protect them both. She couldn’t protect Mikey, her little brother, and she couldn’t go back in time to change the course of history but she could do something now to make sure that no family was ever ripped apart like hers had been.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It hadn’t been an easy journey. It was long, took her years to get to this gate with this paperwork, this permission. Years of no’s, years of rolled eyes and big red stamps across her applications. But if there was one thing that Jamie wasn’t, it was a quitter. She wasn’t a sheep made for a field or a wife made for a kitchen. She was a soldier and she was made for war.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Name?” The gruff man with the clipboard looks at her frame, her dress blues hanging loosely around her shoulders and off her waist. He scoffs and it occurs to her that he’s one of the ones who believes her presence is useless. That women can’t fight a man’s war, that their skills are better off at home scrubbing floors and waiting for their men to return. But that’s not Jamie, never will be Jamie. This Jamie straightens her shoulders, pulls them up and back and tight and squares herself and punches the paper into his hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Third Officer Jamie Taylor, sir. Reporting for ATA training.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because she does belong here. There’s a paper with her name and her assignment and her officer. There’s a bag slung over her shoulder with everything important to her in it; a photo of Mikey. A locket from her mother. A letter from a woman of days long in the past. She had no home, not anymore. She had a country and she had a duty and she had the courage that she needed to commit herself to both.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’d be here until she wasn’t. She’d leave a hero or she’d die trying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>______</span>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>22 February, 1944 - COLUMBIA, South Carolina</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>They told her she would be helping, saving lives, working the most important job that any woman could work. She was told that her service was a sacrifice, one to be honored and valued. She was told that it was worth it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’d trained her, put her into school as soon as she volunteered, what should have been four years of schooling was packed into two with other women who answered the same call. She’d learned to give shots, to dress wounds, to look for signs of infection or disease and even more importantly, to the US Army anyway, to learn to weed out those who may have returned with the parasite of communism leached into their brains.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Dani was finding it hard to believe that anything she did was contributing absolutely at all when all she seemed to do was line up sandwiches on trays and scrub out buckets of waste. She was an orderly, not a nurse, not a hero. She was a lunch-maid, a janitor, she was a housewife in a hospital. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe Eddie had been right, maybe it was nothing but misplaced valor that Dani was searching for. Maybe he was right, maybe she was foolish to think that anything she did would have any sort of impact on the outcome of this never ending war. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There had been rumblings of the Nazi advancement in Europe. The papers and radio had remained positive, with updates on the Axis failures. The country was brimming with hopeful wonder that maybe, just maybe, these boys would all come home. But Dani saw the backend of it all, she had heard the chatter in the mess hall between the soldiers who had recently returned with less limbs than they had left with and less dignity than they had held their entire lives. She watched their faces, dull and lifeless as they sipped on porridge in the mornings. Their eyes glossing over in the horrific crimes they had been powerless to stop in the occupied territories they attempted to guard. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani kept her head low and she studied their words, listened as they talked of hopelessness, as she slapped the slop on their plates. She tightened her grip on the handle of the spoon and she reminded herself that even as a nobody among the ranks of the US Army Nurse Corps, she was a somebody to them. She was a somebody here, somebody doing </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> instead of folding Eddie’s shirts and making his meals as he sat with not a care in the world.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Miss Clayton?” Dani’s back straightened at her maiden name. She’d used it when she volunteered because this was her sacrifice, not Eddie’s and she would be damned to let his name take on her legacy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She turned on her heels and removed her gloves to follow the imposing middle aged woman out of the mess and into the quiet hallway soaked in artificial light. Her supervision, Miss Davis, was an imposing woman. Tall and squirrely and wrinkled and rough. Her voice was harsh, brash, and Dani always hated when she was spoken to. It made her feel like there was something wrong, something to hide, something to apologize for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, ma’am? Do you need me elsewhere?” Dani pulled at her fingers, wringing her hands together. She rubbed her thumb against the base of her ring finger, sliding over the empty spot where her band once sat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“New York.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani’s heart jumped into her throat.. Were they sending her home, was she being released? Was she that useless that they would turn away a necessary body only to replace her with somebody else?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ma’am, please, with all do respect I think I can do more. I can work in the psychology ward or the burn unit but please don’t send me home.” There was begging in her voice, desperation. She didn’t have any home to go to anymore. Not really. Not when she had left Eddie standing alone in their kitchen telling her that she wasn’t needed where she was going. She couldn’t go back now and prove him right. Not when her monthly letters to him spoke of something different. Not when she had so much left to prove to herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Miss Davis straightened, a hint of a smile playing across her lips. “Miss Clayton, you are to board the Queen Mary on the first of March. You will arrive in England by the end of the week where you will join the 74th General Hospital. Good luck, and may God be with you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani’s nerves fluttered and she stopped herself from hugging the woman right there on the spot. No, Dani wasn’t going home. She had so much left to prove.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>____</span>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>17 March, 1944 - EASTLEIGH, Hampshire</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>“If it isn’t my favorite little spitfire.” RAF Chef Owen Sharma stepped towards her as she crossed over the entryway to the kitchen. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jamie smiles, the most authentic one she can, as she removes the light gray side cap from where it’s pinned to her head and stuffs it into the back pocket of her khaki slacks. She looks every bit the part of a pilot now. She’s transformed from the small girl who timidly raised her hand to her forehead in salute the first day she entered the airfield into something entirely different. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s strong now, using her spare time between runs to lift weights or do pushups or jog. Her legs fill in her dress pants, her shoulders fill in her white button downs. The tie that’s pulled tight around her neck doesn’t hang loose, it’s neat and it’s straight and it’s orderly. She takes pride in the uniform, and honor to wear the wings that are pinned to her jacket and the flag on her shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For now, she rolls the sleeves of her shirt up to her elbows. And leaves the tie untucked from the buttons down her chest. She’s around Owen, she’s not in the presence of any high-ranking officers, there’s no formalities to be made. “Don’t know if you mean me or the plane.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She loosens the tie around her neck as she lifts herself onto the counter where he works to chop potatoes for the barracks lunch hour. “You wound me.” He places a hand over his heart in mock surrender and Jamie reaches for an apple by his side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t say that too loudly or they’ll send you up to the 74th.” She gives him a pointed look, half bitten apple swirling in his face and he drops the knife and settles back onto a stool with a smile and a smoke.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Another run then?” He offers over his pack and she takes one.</span>
  <span></span><br/>
<span><br/>
</span>
  <span>Jamie nods, head stopping to catch the cigarette between her teeth as she mumbles around the tip. “Same as everyday, Owen. It’s my job you know.” She lights it and breathes in, giving him a once over as he leans further back into the wall. “Something you seem to forget how to do, I swear it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looks around the empty kitchen and laughs. “I’ve got porridge and I’ve got porridge. Can I interest you in some?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She nods once again, her stomach rumbling for anything that counts as sustenance. She’d gotten used to barracks food over the past few years and she dreamed of home cooked meals one day. “That’ll do. Any brew?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Owen stands to move towards the large pot on the stove. Lifting a spoon full of white glue into a bowl and handing it over to Jamie.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, my Queen, no tea. This is a barracks not a palace.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jamie shrugs, the sleeves of her shirt falling down and she catches them before the unravel into her bowl. “Better even. I’ve got a return ferry in the next hour. Don’t want to soil myself on the way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’d met Owen early one, one of her first friends in the service. She delivers to Eastleigh at least twice a week, if not more. It was one of the most common assignments she got. Every morning, 7am, she’d line up and get her card. Plane, tail number, location, return. Today was much of the norm; Spitfire, S9431, Eastleigh Airfield, pickup tail S567 and return to base. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She did what all the women did, she ferried. She flew planes from one location to another. That was the Hamble goal; to clear the newly minted planes out of the factory on the vulnerable coast and deliver them inland to RAF bases. Most time’s she would return to the base factory with a plane in need of a tune up, artillery that needed replaced, engines that needed repaired. Sometimes she would have to wait a day or two and fix something on site. Sometimes she’d fly bombers to another base up north, sometimes she’d made 5 or 6 stops before even returning back home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t ever safe but it was fun. Jamie enjoyed the thrill of it all, the way her adrenaline spiked the second she left the ground. They flew low, always below the clouds, as was policy. But that was about where policy ended. The skies were dangerous and she understood why. The amount of air-raids that had happened and the amount of lives that had been taken, there was little security in being the big bird in the air. She had to know where to avoid the ground snipers, the high security areas, just to avoid being shot down. They were the wild wings of the sky, the robinhood flyers, the attagirls.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jamie scarfs down her food as if she hadn’t eaten in days and looks at her watch as she stands briskly, tightening the tie around her neck and smoothing out her pants.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Owen stands beside her and reaches his hand out to shake hers. “Just a quick stop off then today? You know one of these days I’ll get you out on the town with me. Plenty of women in the village who love a man in uniform, you know. Could use a winged wingman.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s serious as he waggles his brows in the air and Jamie laughs. She’d love to be able to enjoy a cold beer with this man, to live in a world where she could walk freely into any pub and demand a stout and tip her cap to a pretty barmaid. But not here, not this world, not now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Charmed.” She smiles at him in her most gentle way. She unfolds her cap and perches it on the right side of her head. “Can’t do that though m’fraid. Wouldn’t be fair to you.” Owen raises his brow to her, a question on the edge of his lips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Women love a woman in uniform too.” She pins the cap in place and takes a bow to him as he begins to laugh. She’s gone before he can open his eyes again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>____</span>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>3 May, 1944 - WRAXALL, North Somerset</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>The 74th General was in every way imaginable a different world than Fort Jackson had been. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The property was sprawling, the old Tyntesfield Estate that Dani had no doubt seen countless springs full of parties on the lawn, elegant balls for the elite socialites, had been transformed into a campus of medical tents and rickety dormitories. Over 100 buildings on 50 acres of country land, erected at the start of the war and used to house hundreds of wounded soldiers of the allied forces. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani’s role had evolved; she was no longer just delivering meals but she had her own patients set to care for during their rehabilitation. She’d watched as countless men returned to battle, and she’d watched as countless men perished to their wounds of war.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was eyes and ears above what she had seen at Fort Jackson. The men who had come through there were always on their way home, always headed somewhere better. But here, here many of them had no final destination. Here, many of them would never leave.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani sucked in a sharp breath and tightened the belt around her dress uniform. She patted the collar flat and pulled her hair back into a tight bun as she carefully pinned her cap in place. She looked into the mirror, her clean gray dress wouldn’t be clean by noon.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>____</span>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>3 May, 1944 - HAMBLE, Southampton</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>Jamie moans into her pillow. The headache from the night before, from the two days she had off, pounds against her skull. She should have never opened that second bottle of wine. Wasn’t her fault though, she told herself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shivers, the cold air hitting her bare back and she reaches for the thin sheet that’s tangled up around her waist. The sun is bright coming in through the window and Jamie knows she doesn’t have time to roll over and pretend that she doesn’t have somewhere to be, an assignment to get and a plane to pilot, in the next half hour.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Up.” She feels the pillow ripped out from beneath her head and it thumps hard against the mattress. She opens one eye and glares up at her roommate. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had been a blessing at first that it was two to a room in their dormitory. They weren’t permitted to live in the barracks with the men in the RAF so they were relegated to a large house in town. Two per room, and she’d gotten stuck with an American with a propensity for feeding her wine and taking off her clothes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her and Theo both had moved up the ranks fairly quickly. From Third to First Officer, which gave them just a bit more freedom to spend their off days how they liked, to get the chits that they desired. They were the same rank but it never stopped Theo from acting like she had just a little more authority over her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For fuck sake, Theo.” She reaches for the pillow in the aforementioned’s hand and misses entirely when she tries to pull it back. “Why do you do this to me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jamie groans and Theo Crane, an obnoxiously loud daredevil pilot from the states, just laughs. She’s already dressed in her dailies and Jamie is trying to remember exactly what happened last night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She remembers the wine, she remembers Theo’s lips against her ribcage, and she remembers the way she had to keep a hand over her mouth in order to not get caught. They weren’t in love, far from it, but they had found a common ground in their forbidden dalliances and it was enough to pass the time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Johnson is here for you.” Theo’s voice pulls tight as she drops the pillow onto Jamie’s head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s enough to get her attention. It’s enough to make her, bare naked to the bone, jump from the bed and grab at whatever scraps of clothing she can. “Fuck, Theo why didn’t you wake me earlier? Fucking christ.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And wake this sleeping beauty. Yeah, real wonder there.” Theo’s across the room now lacing up her boots and watching Jamie with a curious eye as she pulls open the door with enough force to blow them both over and faces a stern looking woman with a furrowed brow and a scar across her cheek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Captain Johnson.” Jamie musters up the fakest smile as the woman in question gives her a hard look over, head to toe, and Jamie worries for just a second that maybe Theo left a mark last night. The blush creeps high up on her cheeks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Officer Taylor.” She settles on Jamie’s disheveled hair, her untucked shirt and her lazy tie around her neck. “Officer Crane can you give us the room.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Theo nods once and moves around them both out into the hallway. Turning at the last moment behind the Captains’ head and mimes a knife across her neck. Jamie scoffs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Please come in.” Jamie steps to the side, allowing the woman to enter the room. Her eyes flit to the beds, one unmade and one untouched. Jamie hopes it doesn’t smell like sex and booze and she wonders what would happen if it did. “Is something the matter?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Captain Johnson shakes her head and stands romrod straight. “I have your day's assignment.” And Jamie’s confused because there’s no reason for this to be hand delivered by a superior officer. Not when she could get it from the newbies that sit down at the yard like she does every morning. The blood in her runs cold and she swallows away the fear in her throat. “And you can’t tell a goddamn soul about it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>___</span>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>8 May, 1944 - TROWBRIDGE, Wiltshire</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>There was something they were gearing up for. Something that required Jamie’s absolute silence to carry out. Something that nobody could know, something that was so much bigger than anything they had done.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They had sent her to Eastleigh five days ago and she’d been running the same mission every night; once darkness set she’d ferry the American B-17 to various bases across the region. She’d fly a spitfire back, drop it off, and go deliver another. She delivered several a night, all the way up until dawn, where she’d crash in the medical ward of the barracks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She hadn’t been able to tell Theo before she left and while there was no real emotional attachment beyond the guise of friendship between the two of them, there was a sense of guilt that she had just left without a word. But, it was the job. And Jamie was here for a job.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s somewhere over the country now, only a couple hundred metres above ground, on her third trip of the night. It’s quiet, save for the buzz from the engine which has really become the soundtrack to calming Jamie’s nerves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Flying hadn’t ever been something she had considered, not before she enlisted. But there was something in the way the plane rattled beneath her, with nothing but air all around, that gave Jamie a sense of belonging that she had never known. Looking down on the world, on the earth below her feet, and seeing it so miniaturized and so distant - her head cleared. She was able to focus on everything she had never let herself focus on before. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a crack, and then a pop, and then;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jamie saw everything in a flash as the barrel of the plane rolled, nose diving down, sparks on the tips of the wings lighting the way to the ground. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She never had time to think. Never had time to let her life pass before her eyes, her memories unfolding like a journal into the night sky. She never had time to ask for forgiveness for all her demons, to tell Mikey she’d be home with him soon, to think about what it would have been like to fall in love. Jamie never had time for any of that before she realized she was laying stark still in the tall grass, hidden from the world, and looking up into the stars. She never had time to think of anything but peace.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was warm, her body calm, and it was quiet. Silent, even. Like the power had gone out in the stars and she lay. She lay perfectly still until the darkness enveloped her and she waits.</span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. the soldier</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I realized as I was writing this that it was literally canon that Bly was an army hospital in WW2. However, when I was doing my research I wanted to stick to as many true-to-reality bits as I could so I picked a real hospital. Let's pretend that maybe this was the property that Jamie was referring to the entire time when she said "no you won't find a manor by that name." (It's absolutely not relevant to the story but it would be fun either way). </p><p>Also, pay attention to close times and dates because there's going to be quite a bit of jumping into the past to tell their individual stories. Though a lot of "their" story will remain rooted on a singular timeline.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <b>
    <em>9 May, 1944 - WRAXALL, North Somerset</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s unseasonably cold as the sun peaks up over the horizon. Dani had battled her way through the bitter chill in the air when she first arrived in England, realizing only too late that for all the seasonal similarities there was to New York, there were just as many differences. Frost lines the grass, crunching heavy under her leather soled shoe, and she pulls her wool coat tight around her shoulders.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her shift starts soon; twelve hours on and off - 05:00 to 17:00. She’d been moved to the recovery unit when she arrived. Her days were filled with sorried soldiers, most of which who would rather not look her in the eye as she changed the dressing on their wounds and pumped them full of morphine - as much for their benefit as for her own. Dani hated watching them writher in pain, hated watching strong men reduced to nothing but burns and bruises and broken limbs. And it’s not just once that the thought passes that maybe she had gotten in over her head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani looks ahead the some 100 yards to the tent. The tent that’s filled with a tired shift of women covered in blood and tears, men with scars that will never heal, and hearts that are too heavy to even lift. She lifts her chin as she watches a green box truck pull through the barb-wired gates. Surely there was somebody inside it that wouldn’t be alive as soon as the wheels stopped. There always was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s a new bus coming in.” Hannah Grose says beside her, her breath coming out like dragons fire, the dull indifference in her words skating across the icy air.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah was a gentle soul, had the bedside that any of them would aim for. She had held sickly hands and soothed many fears for an unsurmountable amount of soldiers whose ears heard her sweet voice as their final song. She’d been here since the start and it had taken it’s toll on her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani had met Hannah and another English aide, Rebecca Jessel her first week on site. They had been kind, but weathered. Each of them had been at the 74th for years longer than Dani had even considered stepping foot onto the property. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rebecca barely looks up from her own shoes that track against the grass, frost melting into dew and catching on the tips of her toes. “How many of them you think make it to us this time?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had become almost commonplace - for every 10 busses that arrived, only a handful made it past the first tent and into theirs. Dani’s hands tick nervously in her pocket as she watched the truck come to a halt, wheels squealing out against the frigid air. If they are lucky, she thinks, they all will pass across her chart. If they are lucky, they won’t have to wonder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah watches too, though her eyes aren’t as hopeful. “We can’t possibly take on any more, can we?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a commotion in the distance, two men who jump from the front doors and run around to the back, shouting at a pair of nurses who begin to wheel out a gurney. There’s panic, anxious uncertainty - she can sense their tone, though Dani can only make out a few words like </span>
  <em>
    <span>crash</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>country</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>hours ago.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Full beds in all six tents, we’ll have to open another soon if they add any more.” Rebecca adds, looking up from their track and between Hannah and Dani with a hint of a humor in her eye. “Though, I think some of them are just sticking around and faking it so they don’t have to go back to their station. I actually had one last week who said he couldn’t feed himself because of a hand cramp. Had to spoon it into his mouth. Dropped a little down his shirt, if I’m honest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani smiles despite herself and Hannah just scoffs with her eyes to the side.  “Some of these men. You’d think they’d lost an ear when it’s nothing more than a papercut.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The chaos at the truck simmers heavy in the air. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Careful, easy now. Lift up and -</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Heard we may have to double up anyway, you know.”  Rebecca looks away from the crowd that now gathered and over to the two beside her. Her voice is light and Rebecca had always been smarter than anybody Dani had met. She’s sharp, keen to her surroundings, with an ear to the ground and an eye in the sky. If something happens, she knows, and Dani just waits for the roundabout way in which she’ll share it over supper or a five minute smoke break.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah’s step falters just slightly before marching on. “What do you mean?”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Compounded fracture, massive hemorrhage. We need to get the bleeding under control before we move to surgery. Call Dr. Hines and tell him to prepare for us.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Rebecca ticks something off her nails. “Thirty new tents going up this week. Peter says there’s going to be something big happening soon. Says he couldn’t say more but that by June we’ll have double as many patients as we do now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They are close to their tent now, only 20 yards or so and the frantic breeze whips through Dani’s hair. </span>
  <em>
    <span>There’s too much blood loss, sir. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>A sharp sigh expels from Hannah’s lips and they turn right onto the concrete walkway. “God, I wouldn’t listen to a single thing Peter Quint says.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Seemed awfully sure, Hannah. Better to be prepared than to be caught in the storm.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani can’t bring herself to focus on them, her eyes trained hard on the flash of white and blue and red at the surgical unit doorway. The gurney rolls through and Dani wishes she could be of comfort to the person on it. There’s a flash of brown hair, long, matted in blood and rain and Dani gasps.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dani?” Rebecca stops, watching the way each of Dani features contract one by one in thought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She stops and turns back to them, a solemn understanding passes through her. “It’s a woman.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hannah lays a delicate hand to her shoulder, pulling her attention away from the now empty spot where the truck stands alone. “What is, dear?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The new patient. It’s a woman, not a soldier.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>________</span>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>2 January, 1942 - NEW YORK, New York</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>The bag drops next to Dani’s feet with a thud, the hollow sound echoing through the silence as a single tear drops down her softened cheek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie is sitting at their kitchen table, the soft light from the overhead lamp like a beacon on her broken dreams. Radiating the image of everything she never wanted, everything she was forced to be, forced to have. A room full of pale yellows and greens and a folded apron on the counter. A husband with no clear idea of who Dani really was, no care to even find out. There’s a lasagna in the ice chest that Dani had made for him, something he could live off until he realized that this was real and that she wasn’t coming back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie drops his head into his hands and moans out into the barren wasteland of their failed home. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this, Danielle. You don’t need-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do need! I do need to, Eddie.” This had always been their biggest problem. Deeper than the desires that Dani had trampled down inside the unfilled corners of her heart, Eddie never truly cared to understand her, not even enough to be her friend. He didn’t know what motivated her, what woke her up in the morning, what drove her to each and every decision she made. “There are men, </span>
  <em>
    <span>our</span>
  </em>
  <span> men and they are just- there is a war that young boys are dying in every single day with not so much as a hand to hold.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She twists the thin silver band around her fourth finger, it’s weight heavier than it ever had been before. She had been married to duty far longer than she had been married to Eddie and for so long she had misplaced that duty here. It wasn’t enough, never truly had been, but now; now there was so much duty elsewhere, outside these stifling walls and lonely city. There was duty that she couldn’t ignore. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But it doesn’t need to be you.” He shakes his head defiantly, hands rattling the formica table as they pound down from the grip in his hair and she startles. “You don’t have any skills. You can’t possibly think that you’d be contributing anything that they don’t already have.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani straightens, lets Eddie’s harsh words pass through her and out again because no, she didn’t know that. She didn’t know that he thought she was worthless, she didn’t know that he thought her only useful place to be was inside the home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They are sending me to school.” She says and she hates the way she sounds so unsure of herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie scoffs, standing up from the table and pacing from one corner of the darkened kitchen to the other. “And then what? You clean out bedpans? You give spongebaths? What good does that do anybody? What good does that do me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And she knew that was the crux of it all. What did this do for him? Always him, always Eddie. Always what she could provide for him, what her duties were as a wife, as a keeper of his home. She never lived a minute of her life for herself, only ever Eddie.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But she knows it’s true when she tightens her spine and her lips and her eyes and says, “they need me.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Eddie says nothing, just the sound of his heavy feet traipsing across the floorboards, the far right corner squeaking each time he crosses over. He stops in place and stares at her, the disdain and disappointment in his eyes has her wanting to rip the ring off her finger and throw it at him on her way out the door. And she would, she truly would, if it weren’t for the duty that had been beaten into her since she was a teenager.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She tries for honesty instead. “I can’t save them all. There’s just- there’s too many. But if I can save just one. Just one life.” She reaches out to Eddie’s shaking hands as he stuffs them in his pocket, stopping shy before she reaches him and wraps her arms around her waist. “I need this for myself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a moment when she feels guilty, when she looks up into Eddie’s eyes and she sees the sadness that swims beneath. She feels a tug towards the young man she met only a few years before on the fire escape of her aunt’s condo, who calmed her tears with lemonade and a gentle hug. She feels just a slight pang for something that she had tried for so long to pretend was enough. But it’s gone just as quickly when his mouth tilts into a condescending frown and he snap turns on his heels to lean against the porcelain sink with a groan and a yell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“God, Danielle. You’re being so selfish. If you walk out this door-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s enough, Dani has heard enough. “I’ll write to you, Eddie. Be well.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She picks up the bag from her feet. It hardly felt like enough for her but it will have to be. She wouldn’t need it in Philadelphia, and she wouldn’t need it wherever she went afterwards.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Danielle.” She picks her chin up as she turns the brass handled doorknob in her hand, taking her first step to something new. “Danielle.” It was the last she heard as she walked down the hall with her head held high, pulling the ring off her finger and dropping it into her pocket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>_____</span>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>3 January, 1941 - LIVERPOOL, Merceyside</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>The bitter air howls against her ears. Her fingers burn against her cheek as she presses into her numb skin to wipe away a stray tear that falls down her face. She catches it with the backside of her nail and flicks it out onto the earth; throwing away any sort of feeling inside her other than anger.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anger that she was here. Anger that she was standing on muddy ground, her leather soles soaking up the rain from the day before. She can feel it in her socks, feel the way the dampness seeps through her socks and into her bones.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a bagpipe far off in the background but they aren’t here for her. A crowd has gathered some 45 metres away. There are tears and tipped caps and the hallowed songs carry off into the wind; taking with them the sobs of a mother in mourning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jamie stands alone. She straightens her tie around her neck and digs her heels into the mud as they lower the coffin into the ground. She couldn’t afford anything other than a simple brown box and a plain headstone. Her entire savings thrown into what she could give now and hoped that somehow, someway, it would be enough for him to rest in peace.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s nobody here, not for him, all he ever had was her. Her to tuck him into her side after a night terror, her to make sure he made it to school on time through sleet and snow. It was her that fed him, that dried his tears, that made sure he was warm. Her to keep him safe. Always and only her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t warm now. He was cold, rigid, </span>
  <em>
    <span>gone.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Jamie lifts her hand to her heart as the dirt is dropped down onto the coffin. She had never been the praying type but if she had, she’d drop to her knees and recite whatever Hail Mary she needed to make sure he’d be safe now. Be safe where she failed him. Be safe in whatever came next.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her fingers ticked again as they stuffed down deep into her pocket, fishing out a button that she’d kept on her for luck since she was a child, kissed it once and tossed it down into the grave. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’d made a promise that day through the cold rain as she turned and walked away. She’d made a promise to him, to herself, that she would not sit idly by for his death to be in vain. </span>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>10 May, 1944 - WRAXALL, North Somerset</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>Her mouth feels like cotton, that’s the first thing that occurs to her as her eyes blink open. Her eyelids are heavy and it burns as she tries to keep them from drooping back closed while she runs her dry tongue across chapped lips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her left leg is throbbing. She can feel the way the blood pulses through, each beat more painful than the last. Her bones sharp against her muscles like glass poking through from the inside. Her instinct is to itch it, to press on where it hurts just to see if maybe that will offer up some sort of relief. She wants to push it all back in, back to where it was before, back so something that feels whole.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But then;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her right arm doesn’t move. She can’t lift it, can’t even lift the sheet. It’s tied tight to her side from the shoulder to the elbow like a toy soldier rooted in place, standing firm at guard. It’s aching from root, a sharp jolt from her socket to her fingers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wiggles them once, just to make sure she can, and the burn rockets through her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Panic settles over her. She’s entirely immobile and the slight pangs of throb grow to a full body scream that starts in her toes and comes out through her mouth. It’s loud, she knows it is by the way her lungs rattle against her bruised chest, but she can’t hear it. There’s ringing in her ears, like the screeching motor from the plane as it careened towards the ground and it all begins to come back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She remembers the grass, the way it tickled her nose, one cheek pressed to the dirt. She could taste the salt of the earth as she inhaled the loose earth into her lungs. She remembers the darkness, how still it all was, and how she could feel the heat from the engine on fire beside her. She remembers counting to ten, hoping that she’d be gone before she reached the end just so she wouldn’t feel what she knew was certain to come next. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She hit seven before it all went black.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And now; now she wakes up here. There’s white everywhere. White sheets laid gentle up to her neck. White linen draped around the white bed she laid on. The bandages that covered her arm, once white, now soaked in red, perched delicately against her sternum. There’s a gripping white heat that permeates through her chest, her ribs, her spine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s broken, entirely broken, and she knows that she would have been better off dead. She would have been better off freezing in that field as the blood pooled around her body. At least then she would have died with dignity. Not now, not wretching in pain with a sharp scream in her lungs and a blinding heat that settles through her body. The scream takes the air from her and she struggles to get it back, her chest seizing and her mind racing and,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shhh.” There’s a cool hand at her head. She feels the gentle stroke of soft fingertips on her forehead and the soft cooing at her side. “Shh just breathe, okay?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It feels easier said that done as she races to catch up with the short spurts that come out of her mouth, gasping for anything to make her start to feel </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> that isn’t excruciating panic. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shh. Just count to ten, okay?” Jamie closes her eyes, somewhere inside her she pinpoints the irony of it all. Counting towards death and now counting towards life. “One, two, three, good. Four, five, in and out. Six--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jamie focuses on the rhythmic pattern of the numbers and the strokes. She counts with her, with the stranger behind her head, stroking the knots through her hair and she starts to even out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ten.” She hears and she thinks she might say it as well. She can feel herself inflate, her body starting to numb and relax. The pain begins to subside and her eyes begin to feel heavy again and she doesn’t know what type of magic this stranger must hold but it must be something even more powerful than whatever prayer she had heard about for years. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Officer Taylor,” Jamie hears herself addressed and she still sees black. She wonders briefly if she’s gone blind or slipped into a dream or just into another plane of absoluteness. “Officer Taylor, you’re at the 74th General Hospital. You were in an accident but you’re okay.” The strokes stop and it’s not that Jamie feels nothing, but she feels the absence of everything. “I promise, you’re okay.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s acutely aware of the voice growing duller as her consciousness drifts in and out. In and out until there’s nothing but black once again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>____</span>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>10 May, 1944 - WRAXALL, North Somerset</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani sits in a stool at the edge of the room. The sun has settled below the trees and her shift ended something close to an hour ago but she can’t pry herself away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Officer Jamie Taylor of the ATA lay motionless in the narrow bed. Her chest rising and falling in a slow pattern, the morphine taking it’s hold of her and rocking her into a comfortable sleep. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her leg had been snapped, treated with sulfa powder, reset, and placed into a brace once they had gotten the bleeding under control. There was a deep gash at the top of her scalp just under her hairline, another by her ribs that tore it’s way across from her back to just under her breast. Her arm had been dislocated, propped back into place and taped tight to her side. And then she had been dropped off in an empty bed in an empty wing in an empty tent meant just for women. Women who never seemed to arrive, not here. Not at the 74th.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani offered to take her under care almost immediately, not wanting her to be alone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had waited nearly six hours for Officer Taylor to wake up, to feel the burn through her body and for the clustered confusion to settle over her. She’d waited for that moment just to make sure she was there to ease her back and through. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wasn’t out of the woods, far from it. The long hard nights hadn’t yet begun, not for this soldier on her doorstep. Dani studied her, there was a gentleness in her resting face. Her strong jaw, crisp and sharp, relaxed into a pain-free peace. Her nose, small and delicate and flaring with each breath.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dani sighed, noting the dried blood that has crusted around her temple, and she stood to wet a sponge. Her hand was steady as she wiped it away, wiped away what she could, wiped away the tattoos of trauma from this hauntingly beautiful face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What have they done to you?” Dani asks into to the still nights air. There’s no response, of course, but she imagines what her voice must sound like. Imagines the way it would crack, husky with fear, with a bruteness that only a woman in a torn uniform could manage. She imagines and she hopes that one day she’ll hear it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For now, she let’s the quiet take over. The distant chirping of crickets a melody to the long day. She grabs a spare blanket off the edge of the bed and drapes it carefully over Jamie’s legs, careful not to jostle the broken bones. She grabs another and wraps it around herself, laying in the empty bed next to Officer Jamie Taylor of the Hamble ATA, and she waits. </span>
  <span></span>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>She waits in the darkness for morning to come.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I would love to hear your thoughts, comments, anything, about where this is headed. it's entirely different than anything i've ever written and I want to make sure it's being enjoyed as much as I'm enjoying writing it.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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